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Do you think there is value in being on a secondary journal? I'm at a T-6 law school and have heard from people older than I that law journals are a HUGE time suck and are not worth it. My grades are around median. I don't care about working for one of the so-called "Best" law firms. I want to find a medium size one or do PI.

Really not interested in misery of blue booking next year for little pay-off but interested in what others think. (Lots of classmates say you are screwed if you don't do some journal.... but maybe that is 1L fear.....)

Working on a journal is somewhat expected and if you aren't on a journal, at least some interviewers will ask you why you aren't on one. If you can give a good answer that they're satisfied with, no harm no foul, but I imagine at least some folks will see it as a sign of laziness and it might hurt you. At my t6, something like 90%+ of students are on a journal, so you'll stick out somewhat if you aren't on one.

If you're at Chicago it's not a big deal because there are only 2 secondary journals. I saw no correlation in success between classmates on a secondary journal and those that weren't. Law Review people obviously clean up at OCI but the rest don't seem to provide a real measurable boost.

I had three friends not on journal at a T-14. One was near top 10%, one was slightly outside of top 30% and the other was bottom half. The near top 10% got their dream job, but in the process interviewed with some firms who told them that they wanted to call him back, but weren't allowed to because he wasn't on a journal. The slightly outside of top 30% dramatically underperformed at OCI and the bottom half slightly underperformed for having an IP background. I would just do it and do the minimum required to stay on the journal.

If you're at Columbia, there are secondary journals which are very little work and time commitment, so look for those (the Journal Day materials should make it relatively clear). Because we have so many journals, I think that employers do expect it, but from what I heard they don't really care which one it is (unless they were on it themselves, where it might make a decent talking point with an interviewer).

Considering how bad the legal market is, it would probably be a good idea to be on a journal, since it's one more thing to differentiate you from the crowd. I've also heard of people dropping their secondary journal after receiving an offer by calling up their firm and explaining that they would like to drop journal for X, Y, Z reasons (e.g. more time to do moot court, pro bono work, etc.), so that could also be a possibility.

Desert Fox wrote:I think it's something that you do just so you aren't the odd man out.

The best strategy is to half ass write on. And then half ass all the work. You don't get a grade. Bluebooking is pretty easy if you aren't anal about it.

The best strategy is just not to do it.

I think you probably need a journal or some other journal like activity like makebelieve court at OCI. Most people are still barely getting through OCI. Risking getting yourself dinged over journal probably isn't worth it.

And at least at our school it go ride of one graduation requirement, writing a three page paper. Getting to do that without getting graded was so worth it for me.

Each round of editing is like 5 hours of work for a low level editor. My journal does 3 a year. That's really just like 30 hours of editing during all of law school.

Then maybe 60 hours writing my note. But I would have had to do that for a class instead.

Desert Fox wrote:I think it's something that you do just so you aren't the odd man out.

The best strategy is to half ass write on. And then half ass all the work. You don't get a grade. Bluebooking is pretty easy if you aren't anal about it.

The best strategy is just not to do it.

I think you probably need a journal or some other journal like activity like makebelieve court at OCI. Most people are still barely getting through OCI. Risking getting yourself dinged over journal probably isn't worth it.

And at least at our school it go ride of one graduation requirement, writing a three page paper. Getting to do that without getting graded was so worth it for me.

Each round of editing is like 5 hours of work for a low level editor. My journal does 3 a year. That's really just like 30 hours of editing during all of law school.

Then maybe 60 hours writing my note. But I would have had to do that for a class instead.

Yeah this is really credited. Writing a note is the worst part of being in any journal, but it's something you'll have to do before graduating anyway. Editing submissions, which is the only other obligation while on a journal, is an actual joke. By the end of the year, I could masturbate while editing with no problem.

Circumstances vary, but I generally think it's a better idea to sink that time into churning out solid work for either a trade publication or a broadly-circulated, newsletter-type publication. Or maybe a reputable law journal, but you could probably crank out two solid, shorter publications in that amount of time.

Then again, I guess it's easy for the publishing plan to get derailed, so maybe secondary journal participation is a safer bet. And I can see merit in some of the above comments about not being the odd man out.

Agent wrote:Circumstances vary, but I generally think it's a better idea to sink that time into churning out solid work for either a trade publication or a broadly-circulated, newsletter-type publication. Or maybe a reputable law journal, but you could probably crank out two solid, shorter publications in that amount of time.

Then again, I guess it's easy for the publishing plan to get derailed, so maybe secondary journal participation is a safer bet. And I can see merit in some of the above comments about not being the odd man out.

For OCI you probably won't have time to have done that. You get to put journal on your resume even when you haven't done anthing.